billandcorrie.com

I have been trying to make note of some of the words Lily surprises us with from time to time, nearly always in the proper context.  Here are a few:

• Fragile
• Several
• Gorgeous (referring to Liam)
• Assistant (as in, “I will be Daddy’s assistant when he washes Angus.”)
• Project
• Delicate
• Ottoman
• Reflection (”I can see my reflection in this spoon!”)
• And, my favorite so far was just uttered tonight: Privacy.  “I need some privacy to put my jammies on.”

Also, a funny thing she said recently — I had just spilled something and, mindful to use G-rated language, was exclaiming, “Crumb!  Crumb crumb crumb!”  And she said, “Mommy, you sound like a hippopatamus chewing gum!”  This is in reference to Dr. Suess’ Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? in which Mr. Brown can sound like a hippopatumus chewing gum: “Grum grum grum.”  What was remarkable was that it had probably been weeks or even a few months since we’d read that book.  She has quite a memory.  Today while we were driving, she recognized the pediatric dentist’s office where we went for her first and only visit last month.

Oh, and while I’m jotting down amazing things Lily says for posterity’s sake, I must also make note of her fascinating ability to recognize and remember people’s relationships to each other.  She started taking an interest in this several months ago, when she started understanding that Ethan and Finn are her cousins.  And, despite the fact that my parents have always been called Nana and Papa in her presence, out of the blue Lily started calling my dad “Gampa.”  I asked her why, and she said, “Because he is my gandpader.”  (Interestingly, my mom is still Nana.)  But she calls them her “gandparents,” and will say when we see them, “Look, Mommy, there are your parents!”  She knows that Aunt Jill is my sister, and she now understands that my Grandma Graves (Mee-Maw) is Gampa’s mom, and Grandma Barker is Nana’s mom.  When asked, she can name all of my parents grandchildren, Ethan, Finn, herself, and Liam.  “We’re their grandkids!” she’ll say.  And she understands that all these relationships are reciprocal — for instance, after I told her Mee-Maw was Papa’s (Gampa’s) mom, she later said, “He’s her son.”  I find all of this remarkable, since she’s been saying these things months before her third birthday.  I just want to have these things written down, since this blog has basically taken the place of a baby book.  That little girl amazes us everyday.  (To which she would respond, “I’m NOT a little girl!  I’m a BIG KID.” — a refrain we hear daily.)

So today has been a better day.  First of all, this was the first really beautiful day we’ve had weather-wise.  Blue skies, sunshine, and 62 degrees.  I’d been eyeing the forecast all week with the zoo in mind, and today was the day.  i still get a bit nervous about heading out with both kids to manage on my own.  And it wasn’t without some bumps in the road.  I think we were at the zoo for a full hour before we saw an animal.  It took us that long to get everyone fed, to the bathroom, and content.  And we didn’t get very far — just a couple of the exhibits nearest the entrance and a stint at the playgroud.  But everyone enjoyed things more once I stopped trying to urge Lily along and just went at her pace (Liam was in the stroller, and I didn’t want to haul out the double stroller yet, so Lily was on foot and free to roam).  So, it was the boy’s first trip to the zoo!  And really, his first time outside for recreational purposes.  Until now, he’s been under a blanket as we hurried him to or from the car.  A little sad really, watching him squint in the sun and blink at the breeze in his face — things he has never experienced due to his winter arrival.

No pictures of this outing, as it was all I could do to get both kids and a stocked diaper bag out of the house — didn’t bother with the camera this time.  Hopefully we’ll get back to the zoo soon with Daddy, and document the trip with a few photos.

It’s time to eat those words.  Pretty much Liam is a carbon copy of newborn Lily.  We had a brief period in there around a month (lasted a week, maybe?) that things seemed to be going pretty smoothly.  We got the breastfeeding thing worked out, but he would easily take a bottle when needed.  Nights were pretty predictable, and Liam was a happy little guy much of his awake time.  But now?  Not so much.

We keep trying treatments for acid reflux (GERD, really), but so far we haven’t seen much difference.  We are on our second med (Prilosec), with fingers crossed.  But I’m not sure how any medication can be much good when he spits it up almost immediately.  When Lily was new, we treated her for reflux, too, but when the first medication didn’t do much, we just assumed relux must not be the issue, so we didn’t push for a different treatment.  We figured she was just a fussy baby.

But this time, I have been advised by friends who have battled reflux that we really need to keep persevering.  His cries simply don’t seem like typical newborn stuff.  He screams in the middle of feedings, and over the last few days has stopped taking a bottle.  He does better with breastfeeding, but will still often pull away screaming, or spits up 10 minutes later and start screaming.  Nothing really soothes him until he just wears himself out and drifts off.  I feel so helpless to do anything for him.  Yesterday I just broke down, crying for Liam’s obvious discomfort, and even regretful for not being a better advocate for Lily when she was probably going through the same thing.

We still see glimpses of our happy little boy, but now it is just for a few minutes, a couple of times a day.  Then his face will cloud over, and he’ll turn red and start screaming again.  And we are just worn out.  I told Bill yesterday that, when screaming is the constant soundtrack of your life, NOTHING is easy.  Putting on my coat has me cursing.  Tying my shoes is a chore.  I am frantic and on edge non-stop, and my patience with Lily is thin at best, which is not fair to her.  I feel terrible and guilty when I’m just praying for him to go to sleep so that we can all get a break.

So that’s where we are right now.  Just enduring.  I had so hoped for things to be different this time around, and maybe they still will be if we find a medication that works.  But when that is an unknown, it’s hard to see light at the end of the tunnel.  We are just taking it one day at a time.

I’m already several days late with Liam’s two-month update!  We went to the pediatrician last Friday for his check-up, and I saw a couple of brand new little ones there.  Could not believe how much bigger and sturdier Liam seems in such a short time!  But I don’t know when that happened?  I mean, it’s hard to see the changes on a daily basis, and then all of a sudden he’s not a tiny newborn anymore.  Since we are currently leaning toward not having any more babies, it’s a little sad for me when I realize — that’s it — I may never have a tiny little jello-y newborn again.  He’s a solid infant.  (But still a bit of a bobblehead!)

So.  The facts:  At two months, Liam weighs around 11 lbs.  I realize now that a baby’s weight can vary quite a bit over the course of a day, because we had a rented scale and I was weighing him routinely.  So, when we weighed him at home, he was 11 lbs 3 oz, but at his doctor’s appointment, he weighed in at 10 lb 15 oz.  That put him at the 30th percentile for weight.  Length was 22 inches (16th percentile), but our pediatrician thought maybe the nurse didn’t get a very accurate measure, because he thinks Liam looks more proportionate length to weight than that would indicate.  Noggin is 15.5 inches in circumference, which is at the 75th percentile!  But he doesn’t really look like he has a huge head.  He just looks perfect.

Liam eats around 4-5 oz at a feeding, about 6 times a day.  After all the breastfeeding issues we had early on, things finally fell into place — almost instantly — at around the four-week mark.  So, needless to say, I am so, so glad I persevered.  I really don’t know how at peace I would have been if I had quit, at least for a long time.  So now things are smooth sailing, and I couldn’t be happer about that.  He is even getting a bit faster with nursing, which is a blessing, because at first it would take over an hour sometimes.  We have continued to give him a bottle (of pumped milk) the feeding before we go to bed and in the middle of the night.  I have tried nursing him at those times, and he is just really sleepy, so I’m afraid he won’t get full and will wake again a short time later.  I am all about maximizing our sleep potential.

Speaking of sleep, I am pretty grateful for what we’re getting, but I’m definitely ready for Liam to decide he can sleep through the night.  The last several days, we have fallen into a *tentative* pattern of feeding around 8 or 8:30, then he goes down.  We will get him up to feed him again around 10:30, before we go to bed, to try to stretch the time until the next feeding.  Then he will wake around 2:30 or 3, and hopefully not again until at least 5:30 or 6, which is when we (or at least I) grudgingly get up for the day.  However, the last two nights he has slept for a solid six-hour stretch the first part of the night, which is great, because then he didn’t get up for the day until after 7.  Lily has been getting up between 6:30 and 7 anyway, so that has worked pretty well.  We’ll see if it lasts.  So, you’d think that 6 hours of sleep would feel pretty good right?  I wouldn’t know.  My body is still on Liam’s previous 3-4 hour schedule, so I lay awake last night, just waiting for him to wake to eat.  I know we’ll all get in sync one of these days!  Probably just in time for daylight savings time to through us all for a loop next week.

Liam is on medication for reflux, which we hope will help with his fussiness.  When I say fussiness, I really mean a lot of screaming and crying, often during or after feedings.  He spits up a TON, which means not only does he go through a few outfits a day, but often Bill and I have to change sometime during the day, too.  We’re talking projectile, and often.  That in and of itself is not reason to medicate, as medication will not have an effect on the spitting up, just the discomfort of it.  And it’s so hard to know if that is what is causing Liam’s unhappiness so much of the time.  He can go from happy and smiling to screaming mad in a split second.  Lily was pretty much the same way, and we spent a lot of her first year trying to figure out why.  She was on relux medication, too, and we never were completely convinced it made any difference.  So it could just kind of be temperament.  Still, that is a lot to explain to strangers at the grocery store who look at me like, “What is WRONG with that baby and WHY aren’t you doing anything about it?”

But he does have periods of content time, too.  When he’s happy, all is right with the world.  Liam started smiling soon after his one-month update.  He even kind of laughs a little now.  He coos and gurgles and makes all those little sounds you forget about since you last had a newborn.  He loves looking at faces and is starting to track faces really well, even turning his head to keep focused on his target face.  He is starting to reach for things a bit more, primarily to bat at toys in front of him.  When on his tummy, he can hold his head up for a few seconds, but it’s admittedly my fault that he’s not stronger with this (for shame, pediatric physical therpapist!).  It’s just been so cold, and our house is so drafty near the floors, I haven’t been too inclined to do a lot of floor time.  Just one of the many challenges I have found with having a winter baby.

And so we look forward to spring and getting outside!  The weather warmed up into the 50’s for the past several days, and I was able to take Liam to and from the car without a blanket covering the carseat.  I realized that he really hasn’t even seen the outside world, because anytime we have him out, he is completely covered.  Poor little guy.  But what wonders he has in store for him over the coming months!

Lily had her first visit to the dentist last week, and I was so proud of her.  We had talked a lot about what to expect, and we had even checked out a book from the library with photos of kids at the dentist’s office, so Lily would be prepared.  But I really wasn’t sure what would happen when the hygenist started trying to actually put tools in her mouth.  She was such a big girl.  Opened right up and they were able to do a full cleaning — which they said sometimes for the first visit or two it’s just an exam to let kids get acclimated.  Lily got to wear princess glasses throughout, and her favorite part was receiving a token after the exam to put in the “prize tower,” a variety of gumball machines with teeth-friendly prizes — no gum or candy.  My least favorite part was learning that, once her back teeth start to move closer together, I’m supposed to start flossing.  Seriously?  Could we add one more chore at bedtime to extend the routine to the one-hour mark?  Anyway, Lily and Mommy were all smiles when the visit was over, and we celebrated – as is the custom in our family — with a trip to McDonald’s.

And here’s the newest addition to the playroom:

I told Bill one day, “I can’t believe that, with your background, you haven’t set up a computer for Lily yet,” and within a few hours the computer station was all ready to go, complete with a mini mouse to fit Lily’s mini hand.  She, of course, took to it quickly.  She has experimented with the computer a bit before, but the mouse was too unwieldy.  Besides, we typically only use the laptops anyway.  So now Lily is using an old recycled laptop of Bill’s, plus an old monitor of mine, and Bill hooked up a regular keyboard and mouse.  Bill found some good kid-friendly games, and we’ve bookmarked a few websites (like PBSkids.org).  PBSkids is a great one because it has a feature where you can turn off all possible options except for the game — so kids can’t accidently close the window, or shut down the computer, or surf the web.  Anyway, Lily is happy to have her own “‘puter” now, and it gives us another option for something to do during these still chilly winter days.

(Oh, and Liam’s still around, too.  He just hasn’t done much that’s blog-worthy lately.  But he hits the two-month mark tomorrow, so I’ll dedicate a post to him then.)